#221#
Bursts of laughter are heard. Do you see? The members of the
mushairah have arrived. These are unusual people. /Their coming is
the coming of a tumult./ They're so lively and full of vitality that
their high spirits and zest will never yield an inch under the weight
of seriousness. They will laugh so much, and make others laugh so
much, that everybody's jaws will ache. But they will neither move the
steps of progress forward, nor raise earlier buildings higher. They
will go leaping and gambolling around among those upper stories. They
will decorate one house with the contents of another, and will
display every object in a series of changing colors. Taking the same
flowers and dipping them in perfume, they will sometimes weave a
garland, sometimes adorn curls of hair, sometimes make flower-balls
and fling them around until the Holi festival is put to shame. These
lucky ones will also live in a good time. They will have such
appreciators available that every flower from their garden will be
sold for the price of a whole bed of saffron.

In this daur, Miyāñ
Rangīn prepared the newest bouquets and displayed them before
the people of the mushairah--that is, from out of Rekhtah he produced
reḳhtī. We would certainly have said that the
romantic poetry of India had returned to its roots. But since
previous poetry was founded on truth, and reḳhtī is
meant only for laughter and joking among friends, we cannot call it
anything but buffoonery. In fact, if we declare that the volumes of
Rangīn and Sayyid Inshā have sown the seeds of Lucknow's
Qaiṣar Bāġh and its affairs, we will not be guilty of
casting any false aspersions. Although the original invention was
that of Miyāñ Rangīn, even greater feminine skills
were shown by Sayyid Inshā.

In the age of
these gentlemen of accomplishment, hundreds of the elders'
expressions were given up. Nevertheless, those that remain will be
revealed in the verses given below. Indeed, from some of Shaiḳh
Muṣḥafī's #222# words it seems
that he is much in love with his inheritance from the elders. Sayyid
Inshā and Jurʾat have given up many of those words. But
they casually say nit, ṭuk, añkhṛiyāñ,
zor (that is, much). And vāchhṛe, bhallah
re, jhamakṛā, ajī are the special
style of Sayyid Inshā. Indeed, he has adopted such a style in
his poetry that he says whatever he wants. We don't know whether this
is his daily speech, or he is indulging in buffoonery. In any case, I
record some verses, from which it can be seen what ancient idioms
that now have been given up had survived to this time. The rest of
the words will be known from those gentlemen's ghazals that have been
quoted after the accounts about them. Thus Shaiḳh Muṣḥafī
says, [twenty #223# verses]. And Sayyid
Inshāʾallāh Ḳhān says: [eight #224#
verses]. And Jurʾat says: [twenty-one #225#
verses].

SHAIḲH
QALANDAR BAḲHSH JURʾAT

With the pen-name
of Jurʾat, and known as Shaiḳh Qalandar Baḳhsh, his
real name was Yaḥyā Amān. He is known as an
Akbarābādī [from Agra], but his father, Ḥāfiz̤
Amān, was a resident of Delhi proper.a
It is written in every anthology that his family's lineage derives
from Rāʾe Amān of the time of Muḥammad Shāh,
and the term 'Amān' has come down as a title of honor in his
family since the time of Akbar. Ḥakīm Qudratullāh
Qāsim says that his ancestors used to be doorkeepers in the
royal court.

An anecdote: The saying
of the elders is true, that if you want to inquire about the ability
and status of someone's parents and elders, look at that person's
name. That is, the name the person bears will be according to their
[=the elders'] worth. The truth of the situation is that Rāʾe
Amān was a doorkeeper in the time of Muḥammad Shāh.
Although even the doorkeepers of that time were better than the
holders of high posts nowadays! But the greatest reason for his fame
was that when Nādir Shāh ordered the general massacre,
#226# some people held their reputation and their
family's honor in higher regard than their lives, and arranged to
defend their homes. When Nādir's soldiers arrived there, they
met sword with sword. In the process, lives were lost on both sides.
After the truce, when the deaths of Nādir's soldiers and the
reasons for them were investigated, those people were seized. Rāʾe
Amān was among them. Thus they were strangled with shawls and
sashes, and put to death.b

Jurʾat was
a pupil of Miyāñ Jaʿfar ʿAlī Ḥaṣrat.c
In addition to the art of poetry, he was a master of astrology, and
had a keen interest in music also. Thus he played the sitar very
well. First, he took up a post in the service of Navab Muḥabbat
Ḳhān, son of Ḥāfiz̤ Raḥmat Ḳhān,
Navab of Bareilly. Jurʾat and Mīr Inshāʾallāh
Ḳhān used to be boon companions. Accordingly, Jurʾat
composed this verse:

/I was always such a flower-picker in the garden of love

Even when I became a servant, it was of Navab Muḥabbat [=Love]
Ḳhān/.

In A.H. 1215 [1800-01], he arrived
in Lucknow, and took up a post in the service of Mirzā Sulaimān
Shikoh. One time his salary was late. With an elegance of request, he
composed the concluding verse of a ghazal:

/Jurʾat, now that the salary is cut off, I say

'As long as God doesn't give, how will Solomon give?'/

It's a proverb in Persian: 'Until God
gives, how can Solomon give?'

How he lost his eyesight:
About Miyāñ Jurʾat, in all the books the only sad
fact given is that in the prime of his youth he lost his eyesight.
Some say that this accident happened due to smallpox, but my late
Ustad said one day, 'My friend, each age has two eyes: the eye of
virtue looked with great appreciation at his accomplishment; the eye
of evil could not see it, and showed an unattractive stain on the hem
of his garment'. They say that originally he was not really blind.
For some purposes--the demands of youthful mischief--he himself
feigned blindness; gradually, he #227# became
truly blind.

The unfolding of the details of
an instructive story: The elders say, 'Nobility of
character and descent are in love with poverty'; 'Wealth and noble
descent are [hostile] co-wives'. This is true, and the reason is that
the principles and laws of noble character can be well upheld only by
the poor. 'Prosperity came--Doomsday came; property came--calamity
came.' Miyāñ Jurʾat's high spirits, his telling of
anecdotes, had passed beyond the limits of buffoonery, and the nobles
of India had no task more important than this buffoonery, nor any
boon beyond this. They say that Mirzā Qatīl, Sayyid Inshā,
and he lived in such a way that they couldn't even manage to stay at
home. Today Jurʾat is at one noble's house, the next day some
other noble comes calling. He gathers Jurʾat up and carries him
away; Jurʾat stays there for four or five days. Some other navab
comes, and takes him away from there. Wherever he goes, even more
than comfort and ease, provisions for pleasure have been made. Night
and day, bursts of laughter and merriment.

In the house, a
Begam Sahib heard his witticisms and anecdotes, and was very much
pleased. And she said to the Navab Sahib, 'I too wish to hear his
conversation. Bring him inside for dinner.' Curtains and screens were
hung--the ladies sat inside, he sat outside. After some days, except
for a few noble ladies who kept purdah in name only, the ladies of
the household began to move around freely in his presence. Gradually
the ladies who kept purdah began to feel so free with him, that they
themselves began to converse with him. In the house some addressed
him as 'Grandfather', some as 'Uncle'. Once the Shaiḳh Sahib's
eyes became inflamed and diseased. After using for some days the
excuse of weakness of sight, he made it appear that his eyes had
failed him. The idea was that he should see beautiful people, and
delight his eyes. Thus he began to enter houses freely. Now what need
for purdah?

I take refuge in God--what a
secret was revealed! It is also the rule that when husband
and wife take a lot of care of some guest, the servants begin to grow
jealous of him. One day in the afternoon, after a nap, he rose. The
Shaiḳh Sahib said to a servant girl, 'Fill the large pot with
water, and bring it to me'. The girl said nothing. He again called
out. She said, 'Madam has taken it into the necessary place'. From
his mouth there dropped, 'The slut has gone mad! It's right in front
of your nose--why don't you give it to me?' The Begam was in the
other verandah. The servant girl went and said, 'Oohh, Madam, this
wretch says #228# that he's blind--he's plenty
sharp-eyed! Now this is what just happened to me.' At that time the
whole secret was revealed. But there's no doubt that in the end he
had to lament the loss of his eyes: [one Persian verse].

Although Jurʾat
was not fully educated in the usual disciplines, and in fact was
ignorant of the Arabic language, he was well acquainted with the
byways of this road [of poetry]. And like the parrot and
nightingale, he had brought with him a temperament for metrical
composition. He lived in Lucknow to the end of his life, and died
there in A.H. 1225 [1810-11]. Shaiḳh Nāsiḳh composed
a chronogram:

/When Miyāñ Jurʾat left the garden of the world

to go to the garden of Paradise,

Nāsiḳh composed this chronogram line:

'Alas, the poet of India has died!'/ (1225)

His poetry is on people's lips
everywhere. His volume is available, but with difficulty. In it are
ghazals of every kind, quatrains, some quintains, lover's complaints,
some satires, and chronograms. In the volume there aren't a lot of
'wet and dry' [highs and lows]. It's clear that the ustads' styles
and manners that he's inherited, he's used with good sense. In
addition, his extensive practice has given him an air of clarity that
has covered up all shortcomings, and has made him famous as a poet
with a style of his own.

He never turned his hand to the
ode: A great proof of his fine discrimination and
understanding of poetry is that he never turned his hand to genres of
poetry like the ode, and so on. In fact he never gave a thought to
the Persian language. Seeing how his temperament ran, he adopted the
ghazal, and the company of nobles and musicians made his ghazals even
sharper and brighter. He took up exactly Mīr's style. But to its
eloquence and simplicity he added such a manner of boldness and
rakishness that the popular taste has decreed for him everlasting
fame. The fame of his accomplishment spread among the common people,
and the elite were astonished.

What his style is in the ghazal:
His style is his own invention, and to this day is unique to him.
Just as it was universally popular at that time, it is so regarded to
this day. Its special feature is that it captures the very spirit of
eloquence and idiom. Only affairs of beauty and love figure in it,
and thoughts of the lover and the beloved create a delight like that
of pure fine wine. #229# His temperament was
exactly suited to the ghazal. He was comradely, full of humor,
high-spirited, with the temperament of a lover. Indeed, intellectual
attainments and mental exertion are the greater part of poetry; but
his temperament was luxury-loving rather than labor-loving. The
surprising thing is that the age gave this sugar-eating sunbird a
steady diet of sugar: he spent his whole life among appreciators and
nobles who put up with his caprices, where night and day nothing else
was talked about [except poetry]. If these things had not been in his
nature, and if through intellectual attainment he had developed in
his nature a power and capability for concentrated thought, he would
certainly have commanded all the genres of poetry--but then, where
would this delight and mischief have been? If a nightingale didn't
have a passionate temperament, what would become of its song? Or
rather, if the spring flowers were as you wish them, how could there
be the delight of spring as it is now?

The point is that
sharpness and quickness were in his nature, but 'a cold affects the
weakest part'. This is the reason that in his poetry there is no high
flight, no grandeur and splendor in the words, no complexity in the
*meanings--a lack that did not let him reach the ode, and brought him
into the road of the ghazal. In this state, whatever things happened
to him and passed through his heart, he said. But he said them in
such a way that even now the heart still leaps with excitement. When
he recited a ghazal in a mushairah, the whole gathering was
repeatedly overwhelmed. Sayyid Inshā, in spite of his learning
and accomplishment, donned different colorful costumes and created a
great stir in the mushairah. Jurʾat himself, with only his plain
and simple ghazals, achieved the same effect.

The opinion of the late Mīr
Taqī: There used to be a mushairah at the home of
Mirzā Muḥammad Taqī Ḳhān 'Taraqqī',
and all the well-known nobles and important poets would gather there.
The late Mīr Taqī too used to come. One time Jurʾat
recited a ghazal--and that too such a ghazal that the verses couldn't
be heard for the clamor of praise. Miyāñ Jurʾat,
either through the warmth of joy that suffuses a man in such a
situation, or out of impertinence and a desire to tease Mīr
Sahib, seized the hand of a pupil and came and sat down near him and
said, 'Hazrat! Although to recite a ghazal in your presence is
discourtesy and shamelessness--well, still, have you heard the
nonsense that this foolish one babbled?' Mīr Sahib frowned, and
remained silent. Jurʾat repeated his question; #230#
Mīr Sahib made some vague noises, and again put him off. When
he insisted, Mīr Sahib said these words:d
'This is your situation: you don't know how to compose verses. Go on
composing your kisses and caresses.' The late Mīr Sahib was the
supreme paterfamilias of the poets. Whatever words he might use to
convey his meaning, he was an accomplished jeweler; he assessed the
jewels very well. There is no doubt that Jurʾat expressed the
secrets and longings of lover and beloved, and affairs of beauty and
love, with a liveliness and piquancy that are his alone; to this day
they have not been vouchsafed to anyone else. He has written a number
of ghazals on ghazals of Mīr and Saudā. Their poems were
kings of poetry, but he makes one writhe with the pleasure his
liveliness gives.

[Six verses in the same pattern, one
each by Mīr, Saudā, Muṣḥafī, Jurʾat,
and two by Żauq 'in his youth':]

One opening verse of Saudā's is
famous.e
My late Ustad used to recite an opening verse of Jurʾat's on it.
I remember one line, the second I've forgotten. Now I've searched
through the whole volume, and I don't find it. It seems that it's
traveled from tongue #231# to tongue and reached
us here, while there it was never entered in the volume. A number of
verses by Nāsiḳh and Ātish are in this state. I've
heard these verses from the lips of trustworthy individuals who
themselves used to take part in their mushairahs, but now those
verses are not found in their volumes. Hundreds of verses of my late
Ustad's are in this state, as the present sinful writer knows: I
myself remember them, or they are on the lips of one or two other
people. When these people no longer remain, the verses will be
consigned to oblivion. May the Generous Maker bring my Ustad's
collection to completion as well! Saudā has an opening verse:
[one verse by Saudā, another in the same pattern by Jurʾat].

[Two verses in the same pattern, by
Mīr and Saudā:]

/When anyone spoke your name in front of me

With difficulty I controlled my oppressed heart/

/In the garden at dawn, when I spoke the name of that quarrelsome one

The dawn breeze made the flowing wave act as a sword/

[A verse on the same theme by
Jurʾat:]

/When yesterday I went and sat next to someone of the same name as
you

The moment I heard the name I was frozen with my hand clutched to my
heart/

[Three verses in the same pattern,
by Mīr, Saudā, and Jurʾat:]

/Yesterday in the garden, when the rose made a claim to beauty

The beauty of the beloved made its face good and red/

/When the rose thought itself to equal you

The dawn breeze gave it a slap and made its face red/

/When the beloved's sword thought of shedding blood

The lovers too made the sword's face glowing and red/

The bird of fame had not yet opened its
wings for flight, when an anecdote involving Mirzā Rafīʿ
and Mīr Soz [and Jurʾat] took place in a gathering. See
page #188#. It's true that the poet brings his poetry with him when
he comes out of his mother's womb.

Certain points are worthy of
note: In his poetry there are some points on which the eyes
of knowledgeable people linger in disapproval. For example,

/When that one becomes angry with me and wanders away [pare phirte
haiñ]

I wander around with my hand pressed to my liver/.

The line is a hot one, but if he had
said pare pare phirte haiñ, then the idiom would have
been completed. [Three other illustrative verses.] Z̤ahūrullāh
Ḳhān 'Navā' and he had had a disagreement about
something or other. Jurʾat composed a satire on Navā
#232# in the form of a repeated-line poem. And in
truth he composed it very well; the verse containing its repeated
line is:

/Why shouldn't it be the manifestation [z̤ahūr] of
Doomsday, when the bald blackbird

Would raise his voice [navā] to sing in the presence of
the nightingale of the garden!/

Z̤ahūrullāh Ḳhānf
too composed a lot, but whatever he composed never achieved fame. All
I remember at present is a verse from a repeated-line poem of his:

/At night, having run my hand over my wife's face, I said

'Through the power of God, "A quail has come into the blind
man's hand"'/.

Karailā the jester:
Karailā,g
a veteran jester [bhāñḍ] who lived in Delhi,
had gone [to Faizabad] with Navab Shujāʿ ud-Daulah, and was
an accomplished master in his art. One day in some gathering his
troupe [of comic actors] was in attendance. Shaiḳh Jurʾat
too was present there. Karailā presented a farce [naql].
He took a walking stick in one hand, and put out his other hand the
way blind people do. He began to grope his way around, and to say,
'Your Excellency, the poet is blind, and the verse too is blind, and
the theme too is blind:

The Shaiḳh Sahib was very
angry, but he too was an important member of the gang of Sayyid Inshā
and Mirzā Qatīl. After he came home, he composed a satire
against Karailā and gave him a good going-over. When he heard
it, Karailā became very bitter.2
Thus in another gathering he again imitated a blind man. Just as
before, he carried a walking stick and began to wander around.
Shaiḳh Jurʾat has a ghazal:

/Tonight we'll tell stories about your black curls, by God!

What a night it is, what a night it is, what a night it is, by God!/

#233# Every time the
word 'night' occurred, he changed the way he leaned on the stick.
'What a night it is, what a night it is, what a night it is, by God!'
Every verse of this ghazal has something of this kind as its second
line. Thus he wandered through the gathering, reciting the whole
ghazal in this way. The Shaiḳh Sahib grew even angrier, and
again came home and composed a satire. It was a repeated-line poem:
/The first one swings, the next one swings--in the month of Sāvan,
the karailā blooms/. Karailā too heard about this,
and he boiled with rage. Then in some gathering he performed a show
[svāng] of being a woman who was about to give birth, and
made it clear that a small demon had entered into her stomach. He
himself became the Mullā, and just the way exorcists wrestle
with Jinns, he abused him, 'Oh unlucky wretch, why have you seized on
the life of your poor mother? If you have courage [jurʾat],
then come out, so I can burn you up at once and turn you into ashes!'

Finally, one time
Jurʾat heard that Karailā had presented himself to attend
upon him. Karailā asked pardon for his offense and said, 'If I
break off the stars and bring them down to earth, even then the deed
will be talked about only as far as the circle of our gathering
extends. Your words will become famous in the world the moment you
speak them: they'll become a line drawn in stone, which will not be
erased until Doomsday. Please just excuse my offense'.

Although I have
heard this incident from the elders, among the many manuscripts of
his Complete Works that I have seen, I find nothing among his satires
about which a jester would be so anxious that he would come and
obtain pardon for his fault.

An anecdote about Jurʾat and
Mīr Inshāʾallāh Ḳhān: One
day Mīr Inshāʾallāh Ḳhān came to see
Jurʾat. He saw that Jurʾat sat with his head bowed,
thinking about something. He asked, 'What are you thinking about?'
Jurʾat said, 'A line has occurred to me. I want it to become an
opening verse.' He asked, 'What is it?' Jurʾat said, 'It's a
good line, but until I have a second line I won't recite it.
Otherwise, you'll put a second line on it and snatch it away too!'
Sayyid Inshā asked again and again to hear it. Finally Jurʾat
recited it: '/It came to me to call the tresses a long dark night/'.
Sayyid Inshā instantly said, '/The blind man #234#
in the darkness had farfetched thoughts/'. Jurʾat burst out
laughing, and ran forward with his walking stick upraised to beat
him. For a long time Sayyid Insha dodged around, avoiding him, and
Jurʾat came groping behind him in pursuit. God is great! What
lively people they were! What a time it was of lightheartedness and
freedom from care!

A puzzle based on the word
'Jurʾat': Sayyid Inshā composed a puzzle based on
Jurʾat's name: sarmūñḍī nigoṛī
gujrātan [=headless footless Gujarati woman].3
The subtlety was that Gujrātan was the name of Jurʾat's
mother.

One time Navab
Muḥabbat Ḳhān's steward was somewhat late in
distributing the regular winter clothes. Jurʾat recited a
quatrain that earned him a robe of honor on the spot:

/Please don't be proud of your position--

what they call 'position' is as weak as the [barren] castor-oil root,

Give us our winter clothes--otherwise

you'll suffer abuse if we suffer cold!/

Ghazals: [Two
ghazals #235# by Jurʾat.] There is a pattern
for an extended-line poem at which Muṣḥafī and
Sayyid Inshā also tried their hands. Look at the achievement of
each one, and compare them. Jurʾat composed a head-to-foot
description [sarāpā]: [thirty-two stanzas of
#236##237##238#
an extended-line poem. Then seven ghazals #239##240##241# by Jurʾat.]

MĪR
ḤASAN

His pen-name was
Ḥasan, his name Mīr Ġhulām Ḥasan, and he
was from Delhi proper. There was a muhallah in Old Delhi called
Sayyidvāṛah; #242# he was born there.
In his youth, he went with his father to Faizabadi
and entered the service of Navab Sarfarāz Jang, son of Navab
Sālār Jang. He lived for some time in that city, then came
to Lucknow. By temperament he was cheerful, lively, and fond of
joking, but he never loosed his hold on courtesy and sophistication.
He was of middle stature, pleasing appearance, and fair complexion.
He upheld all the family values and rules of good breeding inherited
from his father. There was only one exception: he shaved his beard.
My God, my God, youth is a law unto itself! /Oh Youth, where are
you--I remember you with good feeling/. On his head a rakish hat, on
his body a light cotton robe, tight sleeves, a sash tied around his
waist--

/If there's a rakishness in your pride too, then it's even better--

Add to the rakish wrinkle in your brow, a piquant angle of the cap/.

Correction of his verses:
As long as he stayed in Delhi, he received correction first from
his father, then from Ḳhvājah Mīr Dard. When he went
to Avadh, he became a pupil of Mīr Ẓiyā ud-Dīn
'Ẓiyā', and showed his ghazals to Mirzā Rafīʿ
Saudā as well. When he came to Lucknow, his poetry stirred up
the breezes of fame.

His style of poetry:
His verses are roses flowering on the root of the ghazal. And the
fine expressiveness of his idioms is dyed in the colors of romantic
themes. His style much resembles that of Mīr Soz. The
anthology-writers say that his odes were not of the same rank. And
this is no surprise, for the two paths are remote from each other.

The masnavi 'Badr-e munīr':
He wrote the incomparable [benaz̤īr] qiṣṣah
of Benaz̤īr and Badr-e Munīr, and gave this masnavi
the name of Siḥr ul-bayān. The age has recorded a
testimony, through all the poets and anthologists, to its magic of
expression [siḥr ul-bayānī]. Its limpidity of
expression, the delightfulness of its idiom, the liveliness of its
themes, its manner of expression and delicacy of deportment, the
cut-and-thrust of its 'question-and-answer' repartee, are beyond the
limit of praise. With what fineness of hearing Nature endowed the ear
of his eloquence! Was he #243# able to hear the
speech of a century later? For whatever he composed at that time uses
exactly the idiom and the colloquial language that you and I are
speaking today. Look at the speech of the poets of that time! On
every page there are many words and constructions that today are
considered undesirable and have been given up. His poetry (with the
exception of a handful of words) is just as delightful and charming
as it was then. What am I saying? Whose lips today can shape even
five verses with those excellences? Especially the proverb or
saying--in his verses he interweaves these sayings with such beauty
that the reader smacks his lips and can't identify the delightful
fruit. The universally recognized master of the world of poetry,
Mirzā Rafīʿ Saudā, and the crown of poets Mīr
Taqī Mīr, have also composed a number of masnavis. In the
library of eloquence, they have not found room in the same cupboard
with him. Siḥr ul-bayān is in every house, in every
shop--and in fact its verses are alive on every tongue; thus there's
no need to record them here.

An opinion about 'Badr-e munīr'
and 'Gulzār-e nasīm': In our realm of poetry
hundreds of masnavis have been written, but only two works among them
have turned out to be so much according to people's taste as to
receive the authority of general acceptance. One is Siḥr
ul-bayān, the other Gulzār-e nasīm, and the
surprising thing is that the two take entirely different paths. For
this reason it is incumbent upon Āzād to write something,
and to ask appreciators of poetry whether his opinion is accurate or
faulty. The masnavi is in reality a narrative or an account of
events; it ought to be considered a branch of history. In this
respect, it has been written about its principles that it ought to be
in extremely fluent language, just the way you and I speak.

The late Mīr
Ḥasan composed in this way, and with such clear language,
eloquent idioms, and sweet conversation. And he presented them with a
mood like that of flowing water. The shape of the original event was
drawn into the eyes, and the sounds of those events that were
happening there at that time began to fall on the ear. Despite this,
he never deviated even a hairsbreadth from the principles of the art.
Popular esteem took his masnavi in its hands and touched it to its
eyes; and the eyes confided it to the care #244#
of people's hearts and lips. The masnavi did not content itself with
the praise of people knowledgeable about poetry: the common people,
without even knowing the alphabet, began to memorize it as if for
ritual recitation.

Pandit Dayā
Shañkar 'Nasīm' composed Gulzār-e nasīm,
and composed it very well. Its path was quite different from that of
Badr-e munīr. For the Pandit Sahib presented every theme
through the curtain of simile and the convolutions of metaphor. And
that style of presentation appeared as the airs and graces of a
beloved. Its convolutions are the same twists of rakishness that
[women lovely as] Parizads exhibit when they wear their [shawl-like]
dupattahs at a rakish angle, and most of the ideas have been
presented through the style of hints and *implications. In spite of
this, his language is eloquent and his poetry limpid and pure.

How it came to be shortened:
Brevity too must be mentioned as a special quality of Gulzār-e
nasīm. For he has presented everything in a form beyond
which no further compression is possible--and if you remove one
single verse from it, the story [dāstān] becomes
garbled. In these respects, the book should have pleased only the
elite; however, it became famous among both the elite and the common
people. Whether or not they understand its fine points and
subtleties, people all buy it and read it. However much they
understand, they are pleased with that and continue to adore it. When
he first wrote the masnavi, it was extremely long. He took it to
Ḳhvājah Ātish, his own ustad, for correction. The
ustad said, 'My boy, who will even look at such a long book? Apply
the rule of "One-tenth" here as well.' (This suggestion
hints at the Pandit Sahib's position as a clerk in the royal army;
according to bureaucratic practice, he deducted one-tenth from
everyone's salary. This complaint was talked about in every house.)
The Pandit Sahib took the masnavi away with him. And when he
compressed it, he did it in such a way that he brought out its
essence.

In addition to 'Badr-e munīr',
there is another masnavi: On one occasion the late Mīr
Ḥasan chanced to travel in company with a procession of Shāh
Madār's flower-garlanded sticks. Thus he cast the events of the
trip in the mold of a masnavi. In it he has praised Faizabad and
satirized Lucknow.j
From it one can also learn the sort of clothing women wore there at
that time, and the details of the rituals #245#
performed by those who bore the sticks. I had seen this masnavi
before the [1857] destruction of Delhi. Now it is not to be found.
People write a great deal in its praise, but the truth is that it
does not reach the level of Badr-e munīr. There was a
third masnavi too, but it did not become famous.

His volume: His volume
is now not to be found. Ḥakīm Qudratullāh Ḳhān
Qāsim says that it is overflowing with different sorts of
poetry.

The late Mīr Ḥasan's
letter: The author of Gulzār-e ibrāhīmī
says in A.H. 1196 [1781-82], 'The aforementioned Sayyid has sent me
his poetry. And in the letter he has described it as follows:
"Comprising all kinds of poetry, my verses as put in this volume
number eight thousand. I have also written an anthology of the poets
of Rekhtah, and I have received correction from Mīr Ẓiyā.
It's been quite some time now since I arrived in Lucknow from Delhi;
I spend my life with Navāb Sālār Jang and his son
Navāzish ʿAlī Ḳhān Sarfarāz Jang
Bahādur."' It's a pity--God bestowed virtuous offspring on
him, but none of them gave thought to increasing the radiance of
their father's name [by preserving his poetry]. There were a number
of reasons. Their time gave no opportunity to the sons, nor did their
pursuit of religious merit give them leisure. And at that time, the
printing press itself had not come this way from Calcutta. He had
grandsons--the late Mīr Anīs, and others. Their pure faith
and virtuous intent earned them an auspicious time to live in, and
their time placed them on so high a pedestal that their grandfather's
accomplishment looked very small. Then, too, they considered that
their own accomplishment had no need of their grandfather's
reputation and fame.

That is all true,
but the present generation soon, and future generations for a long
time, will regret it. The times have changed, and they keep on
changing. That time is gone; later this time too will vanish. Today
things have reached such a pass that I couldn't find even five
complete ghazals that I could record in this book. To make a long
story short, in A.H. 1201 [1786-87], on the first of Muḥarram,
he set off from this transitory world. He was buried in the back of
Navāb Qāsim ʿAlī Ḳhān's garden, in
Muftī Ganj. His age is unknown. They write that he was over
fifty years old. Two of his sons made a name for themselves: Mīr
Ḳhalīq and Mīr Ḳhulq. Shaiḳh Muṣḥafī
composed this chronogram, and thus fulfilled the claims of
friendship: [two Persian verses].

cḤaṣrat
too was a well-known poet. But his true profession was that of a
pharmacist. His volume is available. It has all the relish of weak
sherbet. Mirzā Rafīʿ [Saudā] composed a ghazal
in his honor, of which the opening verse is: /A hurricane caused a
heap of quince seeds to blow around in the air / Every bird ate them
and filled its belly/. In this way the whole shop was blown into
dust by the hurricane of the satire.

gThe
time of Muḥammad Shāh, and the times before and after
his, were a heavenly period from the point of view of prosperity.
Any noble who went from the court to any other place used to take
necessary things and skilled persons from Delhi with him, so that in
every task, every custom, every matter, every function, the practice
would remain what it was in the capital. When Navab Sirāj
ud-Daulah was appointed to the governorship of Murshidābād,
he took with him not only the officers and servants, but a number of
jesters, two or three singers, two or three prostitutes, one or two
mimics, two or three bakers, one or two green-grocers and
grain-parchers as well. And it was such a time that even the
grain-parchers refused to leave Delhi unless they received ten or
twelve rupees a month.

3If
the word gujrātan is made sarmūñḍī
[=head-cut] by the removal of its first letter, gāf,
and then is made nigoṛī [=without-foot] by the
removal of its last letter, nūn, the remaining letters
spell out the name Jurʾat.

iFaizabad
was formerly the center of government. Lucknow was a provincial
town. The late Āṣif ud-Daulah became interested in
settling it, and began to spend much time there. For this reason the
courtiers too were obliged to spent much time here [in Lucknow], and
it became necessary to construct buildings. But they all had two
houses: they kept one foot here and one foot there.

jIn
truth, at that time Lucknow was indeed in just such a [bad]
condition.